international and in the very heart of moscow. blogs are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture idea of bipartisan report makes startling conclusions about the bush administration's role in detainee torture programs ever hold those responsible for one of the most shameful periods in our history accountable for their crimes last might happen tony and this tomorrow also earlier today the senate voted down the latest gun control proposal that argued for expanded background checks to lawmakers in washington really prepared to lead the twenty children who died in newtown to have died in vain and d.n.a. is the building block of life they can i would also be a building block of corporate profits why are biotech companies trying to act and

human genes is that even legal or ethical. you do know this a new report released today by the constitution project's task force on detainee treatment offers damning new conclusions about the use of torture during the war on terror according to the report quote the nation's most senior officials through some of their actions and failures to act in the months and years immediately following the september eleventh attacks bear all to put responsibility for allowing the contributing to the spread of illegal and improper interrogation techniques used by some u.s. personnel detainees in several theaters i ranking bush administration officials including the president himself to report those concludes were knowledgeable of and complicit in the gross mistreatment. detainees during the wars in iraq and

afghanistan and various cia run black sites around the world but the constitution project doesn't just criticize bush and cheney but also slams the obama administration for its look forward not backward attitude toward the crimes of its predecessor that policy the report's authors contend makes it all us likely that the united states were will ever hold the individuals responsible for what they call violations of constitutional values that they will ever be held accountable for their crimes task force on detainee treatment is a bipartisan organization and its members one of its two leaders included among others former republican congressman a son hutchinson who was also a high ranking member of the department of homeland security during the bush administration. the conclusions of such a reputable nonpartizan organization should end the debate on whether or not the so-called war on terror detainee policies broke international and domestic law

important questions remain in the united states ever recover its worldwide reputation after our leaders so blatantly broke our laws and is redemption even possible if we don't prosecute those leaders and yes that means the former president and vice president for their crimes for more on this i'm joined now by my path antonio attorney and host of ring of fire radio mike welcome back. i'm great you're a lawyer what's your assessment of the report's findings on how torture violated the constitution international law it said the obvious time it said that the rule of law is still should matter in the united states but it doesn't seem to look you would take a look at title eighteen of the u.s. code torture carried out outside the united states is a felony there's nothing equivocal about that it's under the color of law it's intended to inflict middle physical pain it's very clear anybody could read that and understand that we wily law look at night hundred forty eight the universal declaration human. writes that the us had

a major role in drafting that because we felt it was important in this country to have the rule of law but so whether you're talking about international treaties international conventions u.s. code it's very apparent the bush and gauged our government in criminal torture of prisoners and that obama continues to be a participant by not bringing criminal indictments not releasing him declassifying the six thousand paid senate report that uncovers out happen add to that the international convention against torture says we must do that we're required to do that if we follow the law so how did john you and jay bybee. get from this fairly clear delineation of the law to writing as attorneys for the bush administration and now john yoo professor of law university california berkeley if my recollection is correct and jay bybee now

a member of the federal judiciary on the. how did they get from the obvious here's the law this is illegal to yeah go ahead do it i don't. understand it's worse than that look these are the department of justice advised the present united states bush that it would be acceptable to physically crush a child's testicles and that would be completely appropriate that's right of his father in fact was that was that out of the other yes that's right in that came out of this department of justice what we have done is because in the corporate media is responsible for never concluding that that's conduct that we should engage in it's this false equivalency it's almost like there's two sides to every story almost suggesting there's two sides to the holocaust or there's two sides to what i'm in did in uganda that's our that is our modern media there are so timid and they were so afraid that it allowed these two these two reptiles to move into

positions of power i mean can you imagine. being professors and on our bench and we look at them as being somehow intellectual i mean it i'm just astounded that they're not pariahs i mean and so many of the so much as so much of the rest of the administration i guess you know. john you know i think was just put on the on the can i come to russia boast which is you know a small thing you know but it was a statement exact knowledge none of it but it's like this is you know. at least alberto gonzales has kept his head down i guess dick cheney has been out running around and george bush has gone back to paint. well you know what look obama has obama has very clear marching orders under the international convention against torture where there's a criminal act it takes place where of torture they must they demand that they at

least start an impartial investigation into what happens look our our media is so asleep on this the media all over the world is pointing out that the alternative reality of enhanced interrogation is exactly what the german gestapo used when they tried to wordsmith themselves out of being branded is barbaric and barely human thugs who used extreme cold sensory depravation debilitating exhaustion brutal beatings staged executions waterboarding and murder that's exactly what they engaged the german gestapo engaged in now our our media looks at that and they say you know what they used the term and handed interrogation too but we had it's the same media tom that led us into iraq that same media that imbedded themselves because they wanted access to the white house imbedded themselves into that attack that took place down there it's the same media who has wordsmith the american

public into believing that we are different from each in uganda or that we're different from pinochet in chile in the way we regard torture in simply look at the history and we're not you know. if there's not going to be a remedy at law and criminal law and apparently there isn't a president's made it fairly clear that he has no intention of prosecuting much less even investigating george w. bush. dick cheney don rumsfeld the others. are there remedies a civil law. now they're going to have immunity every every stage anybody bringing a case like this there was an attempt to even. and i have you know to characterize a couple of them is criminals in spain and in italy and there was you know some thought well maybe that could somehow parlay into a civil case that could least the story could be told but then this administration stopped that they actually closed all that down look this is

a bipartisan decision the democrats and the republicans both jumped on board neither asked intelligent questions about what does this do to our constitution in this country what does it do to our image what does it do to the rule of law what does it do to the very thing that separates us from barbaric countries and so you had the democrats lined up right along with republicans there is nothing that's going to come of this very important study look when hutchinson says this is horrible we have to pay attention yeah he did my capital the richard nixon lyndon johnson went to his grave knowing and we now have the tapes we've had them now for two years knowing that richard nixon committed treason negotiating with the north to hold to refused to end the war in sixty eight and more americans died a million more vietnamese died because nixon committed treason l.b.j.

went to his grave knowing that it looks like it's a pretty high certainty now according to bonnie solder the president of iran that he had cut a deal or the ayatollah kind of deal with the with the reagan administration to. nine hundred eighty and and and carter you know bill lost and but clinton never prosecuted that we have a series here of literally treasonous crimes traitors crimes being done by administrations and then you know iran contra followed from that that have never been prosecuted. do you think that cycles ever going to break i mean did this all start with gerry ford pardoning richard nixon now well you know it started because it is part we lift ourselves up as being something on some kind of high moral ground and we simply are not our government time and time again not just domestically i mean whether it's a u.n. day whether it's whether it's pinochet in chile whether it's brazil our country has

always been there to engage in this type of thuggery and it's what we tell our children tom we tell our children that the way we act influences who we are and we've lost that identity and we have the media unwilling to talk about it we have we don't even teach this in school do you realize if you were to pick up a history book and you were to talk about what did america do to a year and a what what what did america do to the leadership in brazil when they murdered so many people when they imprisoned so many people what did we do to support these people we don't talk about that because we have this idolized idea that we're somehow different from those folks around the world i suppose going until we can be into we could be honest with that we're never going to move ahead and i suppose we could we could take it all the way back to you know what we did to the native americans when we when europeans or first arrived here what we did african-americans what europeans to deafen americans and this is this is sort of

embedded in the d.n.a. of america tragically but i agree i agree absolutely with you that we need transparency in the discussion on all of these things might happen tony thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. coming up just a few hours ago the united states senate rejected the mansion to meet bipartisan compromise i don't want to call it a gun control bill it was a background check bill is that time our elected representatives started caring less about what keeps the small penis gun club happy and more about what the american people one last car will ask our path. us until i see.

let me let me i want to know we're going to let me ask you a question from. here on this network as we're not in the debate we have our knives out if. we do for you this time it was a surprise thing there again you're in a situation where being i don't even talk about the surveillance me. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something a part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares an awful lot but you sir are a fool you know what that is my other terrorist cells in your neighborhood want to keep us safe to feature isn't the only liberal christian point. your beliefs about it because it's going to support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells us sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this that it's. looking good every day docked up in the field that we won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspective from top class tends to start.

time for ties along liberal wrongful joining me are horace cooper conservative commentator and senior fellow at the national center for public policy research and marc harrold libertarian commentator and author of thank you both for joining us tonight gun control just a few hours ago. you know the well the script says the senate defeated but it didn't really you know according to the constitution is to mean what's his name the mansion. the background check bill actually passed out more than fifty votes but the republicans filibustered and the president won pretty nuts on this here's what he had to say. i've heard some say that blocking the step would be a victory my question is a victory for who a victory for what all that happened today was the preservation of the loophole

that lets dangerous criminals buy guns without a background check that didn't make our kids safer. victory for not doing something that ninety percent of americans eighty percent of republicans the best majority of your constituents wanted to get done it begs the question who are we here to represent. it really does beg the question who are we here to represent cheers for regular order now the senate majority leader mr reid could have changed the process if he'd wanted to set up a different protocol in a different procedure the truth of the matter is as i said from the beginning it isn't the republicans that you have to worry about on these issues it's the democrats who are worried about the two thousand and fourteen elections they are the ones who are bad and that is why was that why it was the vote fifty four forty six and five democrats voted against it including reid and that was for procedural

reasons so you could bring it back up again for revotes voted for it but basically all the republicans voted no all the democrats voted yes the democrats wanted to make sure that they could say to the public in the media and all of their suppliers the republicans want to say that to the one hundred ninety percent republican support if the president was right about that that this would have passed easily precisely because it's not true no it's a mistake in the money case but as mr mansion mentioned he came to grover norquist meeting this morning to make his last minute pitch begging people to see the value of his initiative it's a terrible idea and precisely because it's a terrible idea the numbers were not there mark it's a terrible idea to simply make sure that before somebody buys a device that's principal purpose is to kill things or people that they are not that they have documented domestic violence they're not mentally ill and they don't have a prison record well that's not exactly what this would do the loophole has been

overblown i think eighty ninety percent i think that's what polling that gives a very broad to question it doesn't ask about specifics just said are you for this you not for this this would lead to a national registry this is a good vote them out of no not in there at all no no it's not there and the president has it in a sense president said not only is it not in there but the people who say it's in there are lying and use the word lie slippery slope who won today i think it's a slippery slope it's a slippery slope we'll see the slippery slope that this is going to stop all momentum i think they're going to eat. and on more votes i think they all fail i don't think they have believe in the eighty ninety percent i don't think that's what they're seeing when these senators and congressmen are getting phone calls i don't think it bears out that eighty ninety percent of the scene is that people are there is that the n.r.a. the gun manufacturers and the tobacco front guys who are now the gun front guys wayne little pier peter whatever's left here yeah you know with these two million dollars your salary to be a front man for the gun industry just like you know five years ago ten years ago it was morton downey jr you know the reason matt guys last a day you come up with all the bogeymen instead of understanding the coals are not

coming in and shutting down the senate members are not going to pay a price for their vote today this is not what they wanted as mark points out all that happens is if you broadly describe how you'd like to have it happen a lot of the american people say yes we'd like few or felons we'd like fewer crazy people we'd like fewer people who are engaged in domestic violence from having access if you can do that and not do gun registry were for you but when you head to that is one of them. i mean you said you can this morning to introduce manchin did ok but that pat toomey is a republican i mean he's he has one hundred percent record a record with the n.r.a. he's a republican he came forward and said you know every all this other stuff there is no registry there's no this is just this is just all it is this is the background check if you or i walk into

a real gun store right now we're going to have to have that background check that's right and all this is going to change all of this and all this does is say if you and i are friends you can still sell me and you can sell me a gun no background check but if we don't know each other if we needed a gun at a flea market or if i'm buying it from you on the internet then you've got to do the same kind of background check in the store i. don't deny that that's the truth that is out of all that is that all of those all across some. if you are a professional dealer then you have certain federal requirements if you're not a professional dealer then you don't have certain federal requirements but all we're looking at here in this case is the federal rest of prosody issue what you're likely to have watched probably is for legislators this is not bought and paid for the federal reciprocity legislation is likely what trumped everything else and that is there are likely sixty five votes to support the right if you have a right to conceal carry in one state to make that federal law and every other once

the leadership in the senate realize that that liles or whatever that is who wants the leadership realize that was headed their way they were the ones who started to backpedal and decide maybe we're not going to have any legislation this year and all this has nothing to there were nine nine amendments proposed today the assault was it today's new york times they were all knocked out more like oh so now the new york times makes it true more likely that if anything passed it would have been the gun reciprocity which would have extended the second amendment instead of reduced it i would imagine what that would have done as a would have wiped out gun control in california or new york there's no way that up or you would or you would had senators in the states filibustering that just like not horny. you're going to love it and i think you can easily could go for it possibly as i pathetic i don't know your thoughts on this while this idea that it's bought and paid for look the n.r.a. is only powerful because they have a lot of members and they have more members than ever now and this idea of giving them a ratings or a plus rating that's fine a lot of organizations do that and people have an interest in this and they give

credibility to the n.r.a. and they want to look as a guide to who they should vote for not before that each individual's you know has issued on the n.r.a. i think it's higher than that now it is three there's three hundred forty million people in america but there's a lot more people than that that pay attention to those raids that you know i don't know how many five percent of n.r.a. members support this law is nobody paid attention to the ratings than the legislators wouldn't pay attention to the race and the reason the gun manufacturers have so much money is because they sell a lot of guns because people are a good product and that we've seen and we've seen since all this started people have voted with their wallets they've run out bought guns now people may not like that but people want some people might have like and because of that gun manufacturers have a lot of money and they have a lot of influence i mean that's just the political reality of what i know you want to say and i will acknowledge that i will absolutely. you know i i'm guessing the reason i think that is happening is because we're getting these viral emails i get these things from the say you know obama's going to come take your guns he's going you know there's going to be a race war in america i've got at least

a dozen of those in the last week now seriously you know i'm going to all this is happening i may not have no right way to overuse and these are have no go off on those items you need evaluated john right now there are hundreds of thousands of people who are going out and spending thousands of dollars those people are much more influential with senators and congressmen than the folks who sit around saying oh i wish they wouldn't know i wish they were little profits that the gun industry are making or are more influential with those others. but that i keep telling you that's the reason why you guys are losing and you think this is a bought and paid for and not a grassroots effort oh there's just too much talk about immigration thing let's talk about immigration. today. i hope you find this funny i. go mark is convinced that if you're walking down the street you see a guy who's dressed like he's like you know freshly from mexico or maybe is proud of his hispanic heritage that he's actually here's the quote he says you know

al-qaeda has camps on the mexican border we have people that are trained to act hispanic when they are radical islam it's when you have the greatest liberties you will draw people that want to destroy the right so next time you see a hispanic guy walking down the street who is like is like trying to look like a you know. it's clearly a thing or it i think is an unfortunate statement for the congressman to have made this somehow imply that any person who happens to be hispanic in somehow with their appearance that they're secretly al qaeda it however is not the case that it isn't true that there are networks that operate near the border that support al qaeda and are trying to use either drug shipping drug trafficking or other kinds of mechanisms so i lived on the east german border for a year and you know up to twenty five foot tall fences lecture five of the top

every hundred yards of pill box every other hundred yards of the guard tower people training guns guys walking with dogs continuously ten yards of sand between ten yards of grass at the very beginning of it filled with landmines that would go off in the spring when the sun came up in the morning that was a border that worked is the only one i i know of ever in the world that actually worked is that what you think mark we should be doing well you know here's the east germany example i mean the larger issue here i think and we see this all the time when anything catastrophic happens when we see these events you know life is less about what happens is how you react to it and i see more and more every time something large happens whether it's a catastrophe. whether it's a shooting people jump in and want to do something quickly and that allows the person who perpetrated whatever the catastrophe is whether it's a shooting or a bombing or nine eleven that allows but there are things we do to our own liberties if we do rail our own legislative agenda if we take away our own liberties those people that perpetrate these things can't do that we can only do it

himself and i see much more that the real fear that i have is not that liberties will be taken that they'll be relinquished and the larger theme that i see here is every time there are certain types of tragedies in boston certainly a tragedy people want to capitalize on it for whatever they were trying to do and it becomes not what happened but how we react to it that so disappointing that i suspect all three of us can agree thank you gentlemen if you're. crazy alert on wednesday new zealand's parliament approved a law legalizing same sex marriage and acknowledged three members of parliament celebrated the bill's passage was singing and dancing one new zealand legislature to legislate for reese williamson joined in on the fun by giving a rousing speech mocking the fears of same sex marriage opponents take

a look. at a river and in my local coal the guy who owns. the diet that this bill is passed assume we are really struggling to know what the guy on the floor will look like we don't know if it will come down the pickering or highway as a series of troops over there will be a guest that flows in over the lake and the local school and one of the missions as i head was there this bill was the cool ground. who was the cool well if any of you follow my twitter account you will see that in the packer regularly with this morning it was pouring with rain. we had the most enormous big guy rainbow across. smiling through. various things. to be a song if you believe pat robertson however i was reportedly taken marie's william comments seriously and announced a big a rainbow over new zealand side of the edge of the us.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. of potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a flower is from new york to maybe have team coverage of the storm. but

what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery so the bottom line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. jason it is been a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout what's been like bilbies long three drug policy submerging see here exceptions. i think a little worse if you're going to. lie down superman to a radio guy for a minute. because you've never seen anything like this i'm told.

about the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour biotech companies say they need atoms on human genes to stay roughly double if you really own the human body a new case before the supreme court may shatter thirty years of intellectual property law and save millions of lives in the process also in two thousand and eight wall street crash the economy to ruin the lives of people all over the world five years later the big banks are booming while the rest of us are struggling to recover from the worst downturn since the great depression this is not a time they made us back a small tax on financial transactions would be a start.